Nazi politician specialising in anti-Semitic incitement
Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, Streicher became an elementary school teacher. In World War I he was awarded several medals for distinguished service. Streicher was one of the founders of the German Socialist party in 1919, but shortly thereafter he merged it with the Nazi party. From 1928 to 1940 he was the Gauleiter of Franconia; he was a member of the Bavarian provincial legislature from 1924 to 1932, and then became a member of the Reichstag. He also held the rank of Obergruppenfuehrer (general) in the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers). Streicher was one of the most rabid anti-Semites in the Nazi party. He founded the newspaper Der Stuermer (The Attacker) in Nuremberg in 1923, becoming its editor and, as of 1935, its owner as well. It was he who gave the newspaper its special anti-Semitic-pornographic character. The Nazi authorities had to dissociate themselves at times from the articles it published and even closed it down in Nuremberg, Streicher's stronghold. Streicher used his influence to bar Jews from restaurants and cafes, and he tried to persuade all the municipalities in Franconia to establish ghettos. Shortly after the Nazi rise to power, he was appointed Chairman of the Central Defence Committee against Jewish Atrocity and Boycott Propaganda; he was also the organiser of the anti-Jewish boycott of April 1, 1933. Streicher was one of the instigators and authors of the Nuremberg Laws, and as early as 1938, in an article entitled "War against the World Enemy," he called for the total destruction of the Jewish people. In March 1940 Streicher was suspended from his post as Gauleiter of Franconia, following an investigation by the supreme court of the Nazi party concerning his involvement in bribery related to the "Aryanization" of plants and enterprises. Even so, Streicher remained one of the leading protagonists of militant anti-Semitism. When the war ended, Streicher tried to hide under a different identity. Disguised as a house painter, he was recognised and taken prisoner by American soldiers on May 23, 1945. He was among the major Nazi criminals tried by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In its judgement, the tribunal said of Streicher: 'For twenty-five years he incited to hatred of the Jews, in speeches and in writing, and became widely known as the Number 1 enemy of the Jews.' In an article from his own pen that he published on December 25, 1941, Streicher stated: 'If one really wants to put an end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan's son, root and branch.' The tribunal sentenced Streicher to death; he was executed by hanging, on October 16, 1946.
